Joint pain is a common musculoskeletal symptom that may be either acute or chronic. This is generally caused by a variety of diseases, injuries, surgeries and disorders that affect the joints. Joint pain is a symptom that affects 90% of the general United States population at some point in life with sufficient severity to cause loss of sleep. Joint pain is a common reason for visits to orthopedic surgeons, and joint pain/injury is estimated to cost the American economy billions of dollars every year.
People experiencing joint pain may readily attest efforts to sleep, rest or recline in a preferred position can be fraught with challenges to achieving a non-painful long-term desirable/comfortable rest position. Such challenges are especially troubling in the case of a chronic condition like degenerative joint disease or an acute injury to the knee joint or post-surgery to repair such injury. Pain in the affected joint of a patient renders sleeping, resting or reclining in a preferred (e.g., side) position to be extremely difficult and in some cases impossible due to a tender/sensitive/injured part of the patient's joint coming into direct contact with a mattress and/or other parts of the patient's body or that of another person.
Devices for personal protective wear, such as devices worn for padding and protecting the body, are conventionally made of several components that are permanently connected together and often offered in one or several sizes to fit all. The adjustability of the devices employing such methods is limited, and they are lacking in their ability to provide the user customization of the fit, function and protection. Furthermore, the permanent nature of these assemblies represents a potential source of irritation and discomfort. Such limited adjustability of known devices makes the devices potentially bulkier than necessary, imperfect in their protection, tighter than necessary, and interfere with a user's ability to sleep in a preferred (e.g., side) position while wearing the protection device. Such protection devices also present a potentially difficult ordeal to put on/secure independently in the case of a user having a limited range of motion or strength.
Permanently assembled devices, such as neoprene knee and elbow sleeves, and less permanently connected protection/support devices are imperfect as they can restrict the natural flexion and bending of the joint, retain heat and absorb moisture making the device both restrictive and uncomfortable in use. The performance of such joint protection/support devices is also denigrated by a presence of fabrics and padding that tend to trap and retain heat—properties causing the devices, when worn during sleep, to feel uncomfortable (due to rubbing/scratching) and uncomfortably warm when worn during periods of sleep to protect a particular part of the joint from damage do to direct contact with another hard object (e.g., the inside of an opposite knee).
Finally, as alluded to above, known protection devices potentially force users to abandon a preferred position for sleeping, resting or reclining because a protection device is not structurally/functionally configured to protect both sides and a front of the knee joint from direct contact with: a mattress, other parts of the user's body, and/or body parts of another person. The importance of a protection device enabling a user to assume a preferred side or face down sleeping position has been confirmed by research showing that a vast majority of people cite their preferred sleeping position to be on the side or stomach.
Given the observed shortcomings summarized above, known protection devices can potentially exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: poor fit, restrict flexion, limit bending and stretching of an extremity, excessive heat retention, moisture retention, inadequate protection of the sides and front of a joint from contact with a mattress, other body parts of the user, and/or another person. Additionally, wearing of some protection devices potentially requires changing a preferred position while sleeping, resting or reclining to experience a benefit of the protection device. As a result, many protection devices, when worn at night do not accommodate usage while sleeping in a preferred side or stomach position.